


Two for a Murderous Tango

by Cartadwarfwithaheartofgold (manka)



Series: Paragon of Their Kind 2020 Exchange [6]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Modern with Magic, Angst and Fluff and Smut, Angst with a Happy Ending, Background Relationships, Blood and Injury, Clothed Sex, Dark Cole, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Female Cadash/Varric Tethras - Freeform, Implied/Referenced Abuse, Implied/Referenced Domestic Violence, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Modern Thedas, Sex Work, Sex Worker Positive, Vaginal Sex, murder as foreplay
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-16
Updated: 2020-11-16
Packaged: 2021-03-09 02:01:56
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,388
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27437041
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/manka/pseuds/Cartadwarfwithaheartofgold
Summary: Bea Cadash is a dancer in Ostwick who murders for the Carta because she can't get herself or her sister away from the hands of Ostwick's brutal crime boss.Cole is a mysterious stranger who ends up sleeping on their couch.When the two meet, Bea has little choice but to watch her life change completely.
Relationships: Cole/Female Inquisitor (Dragon Age), Female Cadash/Cole (Dragon Age)
Series: Paragon of Their Kind 2020 Exchange [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2036824
Comments: 6
Kudos: 14
Collections: 2020 A Paragon of Their Kind Dragon Age Dwarf Exchange





	Two for a Murderous Tango

**Author's Note:**

  * For [blarfkey](https://archiveofourown.org/users/blarfkey/gifts).



> Happy dwarves-giving, blarfkey! <3 <3

The bass beats in her stomach like a second heartbeat, soothing and relentless. It’s easy to roll her hips into it the way men like, slow and seductive. She can feel her captive audience’s eyes on her swaying ass and jiggling tits like she can feel the sweat beading down the small of her back and the flimsy fabric of her barely-there underwear sliding against her skin.

Bea spares a look over her shoulder, piercing her adoring fan with a smirk made of nothing but sinful danger.

He curls his lips beneath his thick beard. Sausage like fingers crook and beckon her forward like she’s at his whim, and she supposes she is. He asked for this private show, after all, and she was only too happy to oblige.

She always is.

She flips her dark curls over a freckled shoulder and he watches with dark hunger. By the time she chooses to saunter to his armchair, his fingers are shaking with suppressed greed. He tries to cover up his unraveling composure by sipping at the fine Starkhaven whiskey she poured before she started dancing, but Bea Cadash isn’t fooled.

She knows men. And she knows what they like.

That’s why she drops to her knees at his feet, small hands skimming the smooth fabric of his cheap suit. She makes her voice breathy, low, so he has to lean down to her plump lips to hear. “I thought you wanted me to dance for you, handsome?”

His free hand grabs her chin between fingers stained sickly yellow from cigars before he tips her face up. “You’ve got such pretty eyes. They look familiar. What’s your name?”

She can see all the teeth in her smile reflected in his glassy gaze. “The Black Dahlia.”

“Your _real_ name.” He sighs like she’s a childish idiot.

But she’ll play his game a little longer. The fingers on her chin tremble and she’s almost sure it’s not just from excitement anymore. “Beatrix Cadash.”

The look on his face is triumphant and it curdles Bea’s stomach because she _knows_. She knows, in a heartbeat, that her newest mark is thinking of another set of gray eyes framed by crimson hair instead of dark curls. He’s thinking of her _sister_ and how he’d love to have the famously fiery dwarf on _her_ knees in front of him instead.

It’s not like Ria’s never sucked a cock. She has, Bea’s sure of it, but Ria doesn’t think of sex the way Bea does. To Bea it’s… a service to be performed, either because it’ll make _her_ feel good or bring some sort of benefit but to Ria…

Well, Ria’s different, and Ria’s touched enough by one man who doesn’t give a damn about her. She doesn’t need this lecher with his grabby hands to add to her problems.

“You ever dance with your sister?” He asks, thick fingers release her chin to pat her cheek like a favored pet. “I wouldn’t mind a double show.”

He’s sweating. Now that she’s closer, she can see it staining his collar and the pink flush creeping up his skin.

“You’ve got a girl on her knees and you wanna talk about her sister, serah?” She bats her lashes, skating her fingers in a figure eight up his thigh. “You’re lucky I’m not the jealous type.”

Even his laughter sounds like a joke, but the fool reaches for her hair and pulls her closer. “Lucky indeed. Let’s see how that mouth feels wrapped around my… my…”

He swallows, suddenly breathless, and Bea grins.

It’s the last thing he ever sees. Her grinning up into his features like his own personal demon come to drag him down beside her.

* * *

> B: show’s over  
>  B: where’s my sister?  
>  D: busy  
>  B: i want my fucking sister home tonight or ur next u bastard

The blinking check marks her message read, but not answered. It makes her want to throw her phone on the subway tracks when she steps out the electric doors and into the second shittiest station in Ostwick. Cracked fluorescent lights flicker above her almost in time to the beat of the music in her headphones. Tiled walls tagged with years worth of Carta graffiti stretch endlessly in all directions.

She focuses on the rhythm of the song, eyes ahead, hand tight on her purse the way Ria taught her as a girl. She almost walks past the knot of people surrounding one of the cracked and broken benches.

_Almost._

There’s a lull in the music. In the silence, she hears a whisper through gritted teeth. “Leave me _alone_.”

Harsh laughter and a taunting question follow. “Or else?”

More laughter. Then just as the next song starts up, a piercing whistle trailed by a shout. “Hey Luka, look at _her_.”

By her ancestors fucking tits, can she not catch a goddamn break?

She falters for a moment, torn between ignoring the assholes or shooting them a glare to make their balls shrink up beneath their tiny dicks. Before she can make a firm decision one way or another, a strangled cry echoes in the cavernous space.

“NO!”

She takes a reflexive step back, instincts warring. Fleeing is the smart thing to do, it’s what Ria would _want_ her to do undoubtedly, but Bea never did the sensible thing in her life. She can’t see why she should start _now_.

A figure leaps from the bench, knocking one of the fuckers straight onto his dwarven ass. She blinks, taking in the scrawny young man in his threadbare t-shirt and beanie hat nearly covering his eyes.

Two things stick out. First, he’s _definitely_ not at home in the roughest dwarven neighborhood in Ostwick because he’s _much_ too tall. Second, the human clearly has been involved in his share of fights. He moves like smoke and lightning, lashing out with both long arms and spindly legs.

But he doesn’t see the knife. Bea does.

The worst part is that it syncs with her music somehow. The human raises his fist and crashes it into the jaw of the second dwarf just as the third goes low and thrusts the switchblade he pulled right into unprotected stomach.

Now. She should run _now_.

Instead, the steely fury in her voice resonates across the subway platform. “Get the _fuck_ off him!”

It distracts the last dwarf on his feet. His eyes swing to her and she’s already pulling her own pocket knife from her coat pocket along with the tiny can of mace Ria _insists_ on Bea carrying, but before she can rush forward the human shocks her.

It’s not often she’s shocked by a man.

He wrenches the blade from his own abdomen. Bea is pretty sure that’s the wrong thing to do medically, but damn does it feel good to watch him slam it between the ribs of the final dwarf. It’s even better when she looks twice and thinks she recognizes that they’re _Dwyka’s_ lackeys scattered at the human’s feet, bleeding and battered.

Less good when the human presses a hand to his stomach and blood wells between his fingers, sticky and crimson. Bea looks at the wound, then throws a desperate glance at his face.

He’s not looking at the stirring bodies, his hand, or the bleeding wound. He's looking at her like he’s a feral thing backed into a corner.

“They wanted to hurt you.” He says it like that explains something. But in truth, Bea doesn’t need him to explain _anything_ because she recognizes the crazed look in his eyes. She sees it in the mirror sometimes.

Her hand doesn’t shake when she holds it out in a sudden, rash decision that would make her sister _scream_.

“Let’s get out of here.”

* * *

She’s covered in blood too by the time she gets him to the apartment, but he doesn’t complain _once_. Not about his blood staining the street, his ruined shirt, or even the broken elevator in their building which means she has to help him walk up three flights of steps.

The only time he says anything at all is to apologize when he stumbles and nearly knocks her over. Bea, of course, doesn’t think it’s sweet. Not even a little bit.

The scuffed kitchen table is stacked with Ria’s supply of unread newspapers, quickly covered in the man’s blood. Serves her sister right for buying them and then never fucking reading them. The man in question slumps in Bea’s favorite chair at the table.

When was the last time they’d had a man in this apartment? Dwyka knew better than to even try and darken Bea Cadash’s threshold, too worried of what she’d do in her own territory. He made Maria come to him, and when it was just the two sisters in their home…

Well. The last thing Bea wants is Maria uncomfortable in the last safe haven they have.

Oddly, the human doesn’t look that out of place among the feminine clutter of their lives. The most startling thing about him, truly, is how at home he looks _despite_ his too-long legs stretching out while he sags backwards.

“What’s your name?” Keeping him talking seems like a good idea. Makes undressing him a little less awkward, at any rate. She reaches for the bloody, thin shirt and he obligingly lifts his arms without her even needing to ask.

He’s thin. _Scary thin_. She can see ribs beneath his skin, can count them if she wants, and it makes her stomach flip. In spite of that, there’s sinewy strength in his limbs, it’s evident even if she wouldn’t have watched him lay out three gangsters.

The wound, thank the Stone, doesn’t look deep. But she needs to stitch it up. She balls the ripped shirt up in her hand and presses it against the bloody stab wound while she thought through the next steps.

“Cole.” He breathes. “You’re the Dahlia.”

Sure, sometimes she was recognized, but Cole didn’t seem the type to hang around the club and watch her dance. In fact, she surely would have noticed someone like him in the crowd. He’d have stuck out like a sore thumb.

“That’s what they call you.” He insists. “But it’s not your name.”

“It’s one of them.” She murmurs. “Hold this here, let me get some stuff to patch you up.”

He obeys without question, ice blue eyes fixing on her while she straightens. She can feel them on her while she darts around the kitchen, gathering a bottle of vodka, clean towels, the needle she uses to stitch up Ria…

 _Ria_.

“She’s on her way.” Cole whispers. “He won’t make you mad. He’s scared of you, but not as scared as he _should_ be.”

She whips around from the counter to stare at this strange skinny creature who feels so familiar and so strange at the same time. “What- who _are_ you?”

He blinks once. Twice.

Then he repeats his name like she’s a goddamn idiot. “ _Cole_.”

* * *

She stitches Cole up. Cleans the blood. Tells her sister what happened when she gets home. She even manages to ignore the bruises blooming on Maria’s shoulder and wrists and the exhausted look in her eyes.

Cole watches.

That’s what Cole does most - watch and _listen_. That’s the only explanation for how he becomes a seamless part of their lives in days.

The plan _was_ to let Cole rest. To feed him, let him sleep on their coach, _heal_. Instead, he stays. A few days. A week.

He waits at the subway stop to walk Bea home most nights. Joins Maria at the docks while she waits for illegal shipments of lyrium to be deposited neatly into her lap. When Maria vanishes into Dwyka’s web, so deep even Bea can’t pull her out, it’s Cole that brings her home and settles her on the couch with Nanna’s tea and the books she likes.

She doesn’t know how he manages it. Bea figures out quickly she doesn’t care. For a few weeks she almost begins to think they can go on just like this, that maybe with Cole they can handle Dwyka and the Carta. It seems easier, at any rate.

But that’s not the best part of Cole. The best part of Cole is how he seems to understand her in a way nobody else ever has. He doesn’t pester her to talk. Doesn’t expect her to sing or dance at the end of his rope. He sleeps on their couch and wakes up before her every afternoon, brews the bitter tea she likes to drink, collects Maria’s newspapers, washes the dishes.

Then he sits beside her while she scrolls mindlessly on her phone. Much to her amusement, he’s utterly intrigued by her Instagram feed. He spends hours beside her happily looking at faraway places and stylish celebrities in clothes Bea only wishes she could afford.

The first time he catches her dancing is the moment Bea begins to wonder if he does it because he’s caught _feelings_.

She thought he was with Maria doing stone only knew what, so she turns on her music while she settles herself in the kitchen. The cupboard is almost bare, but there’s peanut butter and marshmallow fluff. It’s a total Maria move to pop some bread into the toaster and make the unhealthiest sandwich of all time, but Bea’s been working nonstop for a week.

Concert season in Ostwick brings tourists from all over the Free Marches. When she was a kid, her and Maria sat outside the venues and listened to their favorite bands in the parking lot.

Now, Bea waits until after the shows to put the best music on her playlists and dance for the tourists looking for nightlife fun afterward. She’s even taken a few up on offers for _private_ dances, if they don’t look particularly murderous.

Which means she _has_ money to spend on groceries, but between Maria running herself ragged for _fucking_ Dwyka and Bea dancing till all hours of the morning, nobody’s got time. At least there’s protein in the peanut butter. She’s sure Maria is living on bodega coffee and twinkies.

She rolls her hips loosely to the sultry beat drifting through her phone’s speakers while she waits for her bread to toast. Even though she knows she shouldn’t, she dips her finger in the jar of marshmallow fluff and licks it clean.

She doesn’t hear the door open over the sound of her music. She completely misses the rustle of bags and Cole’s quiet footsteps. He moves like a damn ghost, after all, so she can’t be blamed.

She’s still spooked half to death when she spins around in a slow circle in time to her music and comes face to face with him watching her.

She staggers back, hand reaching for the drawer of knives on instinct even as Cole’s lips tip up in a shy, uncertain smile and he holds up two bags for her perusal.

“You wanted to go shopping, but you’re tired. And Maria is always tired. Tense. The bits inside her always twisted and tender like bruises and-”

“Fucking _hell_ , Cole.” She huffs a breath out, stopping his rambling cold. “You scared the _shit_ out of me.”

His eyes are wide. Earnest. “I’d never hurt you. Not like other people have. I’ll never leave, I’ll never want more than you can give.”

Her heart doesn’t flutter in response _at all_.

“What’d you get?” She asks instead, pushing away from the counter.

He absolutely beams beneath his knit beanie, setting the paper bags down on their table and pulling out a styrofoam container. “Deep mushrooms stuffed with cheese, like you like, and…”

She plucks the warm container from his hands while he brings out a pie nearly the size of his whole face. “It’s apple. For Maria.”

Maria and her goddamn apples. The thought is fond, even with the sadness underneath. “She’ll love it. Do you know where she’s at?”

“With him.”

Cole’s voice is dark. Dangerous. It prickles deliciously on the back of her neck.

“Great.” Bea sighs. The toaster pops behind her, but she doesn’t care about it that much. “Fucking great.”

“She doesn’t want to be.”

“I know.”

For a moment, silence. Then Cole whispers softly. “I don’t understand. I want to.”

She wants him to understand too, and she doesn’t know why exactly, but it’s something to do with the look in his eyes the day they first met. The lingering impression that _at last_ she’d met someone who would see and understand the ugliest parts of her.

Like she found someone else who’d burn the world down to save the people he loved and be happy to do it.

He nods like he hears her thoughts and a part of her wants to laugh wildly because that’s ridiculous, but another part of her almost believes he could if he wanted to.

“It’s complicated.” She answers instead.

It is, and it isn’t. Maria got out of the Carta, moved on with her life, and then got dragged back in years later as a new widow who hardly ever smiled, one who took her wedding ring off and put it in a box beneath the bed while she marched back into the arms of a man who wanted to own her in a way Maria could _never_ be owned.

The worst part? It was Bea’s fault. Bea with her bloodstained hands, roped in as Dwyka’s assassin, her sister his favorite whore.

Ancestors, she _hates_ it. Hates every moment she has to live like this. Hates the slick guilt when she sees the bruises on Maria’s skin or worse, the mornings she stumbles in and goes straight to the shower and stays there until the hot water is all gone.

All she wants is for it to be over. For them to be free. And they can’t, because if Maria leaves him, he’ll turn Bea in, and Bea…

Well. She deserves to rot in jail, but who would take care of Maria?

Except the answer is there in Cole’s soft eyes while he watches her closely, seeing too much of her swirling emotions beneath the surface.

“I don’t like how he touches her.” Cole murmurs.

Neither does Bea, and she wants to break every single bone in his hands for it. Instead she turns back to the toaster and rips her bread out of it. “I’m not fond of it either.”

A pause that turns into a silence while she puts both pieces of toast on the plate.

“You love more than anyone else. Even when it hurts. _Especially_ when it hurts.” She hears the clink as Cole puts the pie on the table, but he doesn’t come closer. “I’m sorry it hurts. I want to help. I’d give you _anything_ you wanted.”

Someday, when Bea is brave enough to face the consequences of her actions, maybe he will help. He can stay and help Ria, because the only thing she wants is for Ria to be _safe_. No matter the cost, Bea will pay it.

“But there’s no music there.” Cole whispers. “You like music. You like to dance.”

Another pause, then an almost shy admission. “I like when you dance.”

She looks over her shoulder, startled and amused. “You like it when I dance? Cole, sweetheart, I haven’t even taken off my clothes.”

“Because it’s not a job.” Cole insists. “I like it when it’s not a job, just for fun. Can I have the toast? With the marshmallow?”

How can she say no to him?

“Sit down.” She instructs fondly, reaching into the drawer for a knife. She hears the chair scrape out from beneath the table, can feel his eyes like a comforting pressure. A heavy blanket that feels _safe_. Easy.

The next song starts up and she sways her hips in time to the beat while she slathers peanut butter on the toast for Cole and pretends she lives in a world where everything is perfect.

Of course it’s not.

* * *

“Cadash, that strange human is here for you?”

Bea looks away from the dressing room table, frowning at the elf above her shoulder. “Cole?”

“You keepin’ more than one around now?” The elf smacks her lips when she talks like she’s chewing gum and raises one arched brow.

 _Touche_.

She hops off her rickety chair and sashays through the crowded room through scanty costumes and lacey lingerie hung on sagging clotheslines. There’s a door hidden in the back and it opens onto the employee parking lot where a lot of the girls come out to smoke between their sets.

There’s nobody there but Cole. Or at least that’s what she thinks at first. The figure in his arms looks smaller than she should, like a child’s doll, and it isn’t until she sees the crimson shine of Maria’s hair that she recognizes her sister.

She lets out a shocked, wounded cry and rushes forward. Her hands fly to Maria’s pulse and she doesn’t move it until she feels the warm beat of her heart beneath her fingertips.

“She told him she promised to be here. Tonight. For you.” Cole offers the explanation, even though Bea knows what happened. “He wanted her to stay. They fought and he hit her and hit her again and she got away but…”

Bea can’t do this anymore.

The thought is crystal clear and _haunting_. She can’t do it anymore, she can’t wait for Dwyka to kill her sister. She has to kill him _first_.

“She needs to go to a hospital.” She’s never been more thankful for all the money stashed in her inner coat pocket. “Cole, you’ve got to get her to the hospital. Tell them she was mugged. Tell them anything. Just get her-”

“But you need my help too.” He whispers. “You need-”

“You said you’d do anything for me!” She shouts, even though she doesn’t mean to. Her hand shakes when she thrusts the money into his coat pocket and reaches up to pull the gun from the waistband of Maria’s jeans, just where she always keeps it.

“Anything.” Cole repeats quietly. His eyes have that wild desperation she knows so well. “Yes. For you.”

She could kiss him, but she doesn’t. Instead she pushes him away. “Get her to the hospital. I’ll be there later.”

She’s not sure she will, but that doesn’t matter. Maria and Cole will have each other, Maria will be safe, and Bea… well. Bea will be alright. She always is.

Cole doesn’t tear his eyes off her, even as he steps back into the shadows. It’s Bea who has to put her icy smile back on and dive back into the club with Maria’s gun in her pocket and rage simmering in her veins.

She won’t be going home tonight after her set. She’s got other plans.

* * *

The alley is dark and spells of mold, but she doesn’t dare go through the front door. In truth, she’s planned this moment so many times, it almost feels like a dream to find the door to the back staircase. The lock is broken, has been for years, so there’s nothing stopping her from pulling it open and slipping inside.

There’s nothing left to stop her at all, and isn’t that freeing? She may have been a monster before Dwyka molded her into an assassin, but at least now she’s back to being her own type of monster instead of his.

She’ll never be _his_ pet on a leash again and he’ll never lay another goddamn finger on Maria.

She smiles. It’s a cold and bloody thing, just like the gun her fingers are wrapped around, but she doesn’t care. The only thing she regrets, when she thinks about it at all, is she really _should_ have kissed Cole before she sent him away. If she never sees him again, he has earned that kiss.

It’s the last thought she has before she reaches Dwyka’s door and reaches for the handle.

The last thought she has before she realizes the door is ajar already.

It takes only the brush of her fingertips to send it creaking open. The light from the hallway spills into the darkness, illuminating the black pool of blood spreading across the stained living room rug from the lifeless body of the Carta boss formerly known as Dwyka.

And above him, switchblade still dripping, a figure she thinks she’d know anywhere.

“I told you I’d give you anything you wanted.” Cole whispers to her frozen form.

She steps into the apartment, closing the door behind her, plunging them into darkness. She holds out her steady fingers, but her voice trembles. “You were supposed to stay with Ria.”

“He could have hurt you.” He sounds closer already, even though she can’t see him. Then his cool fingers brush hers and her heart leaps to her throat. “I couldn’t let him hurt you. Hurt _her_. Not anymore.”

It’s the most touching thing she’s ever heard, and the venom behind it tastes like sheer bliss.

“Come here, sweetheart.” Bea whispers.

She twists her fingers around his and tugs him closer. Arms wrap around his narrow chest and she buries her face into his torso, inhaling the clean scent that clings to him past the iron tang of blood. She can hear his heart thudding steadily beneath her and it’s a soothing sound she feels like she’s taken for granted.

His own long fingers find their way to her curls, holding her to him, clinging to her like two people lost at sea.

Except they’re the storm too, and Bea knows it. She lifts her chin and he leans down like he’s read her mind. Their lips brush, sparks _fly_. Her small hands fist in his thin shirt and the knife drops to the floor in a clatter of steel.

He’s suddenly cradling her face, stroking her jawbone, and each touch sends heat to the base of her spine, building into an inferno. “ _Cole_.”

“Yes?” He whispers the question against her lips, the soft movement of them like moth wings in the darkness. Bea forgets. She forgets Dwyka’s body, all her muder victims, Maria herself. It’s all gone, leaving just her and Cole, twin ghosts in the dark.

“You said you’d give me anything I wanted?” It comes out a question, but she barely voices it before he’s nodding against her.

“ _Anything_.” He promises.

It feels like plunging into the abyss to ask for it, but she does anyway. “You. I want _you_.”

Cole says nothing. He simply tightens his grip in her curls and smashes his lips back to hers with a passion that echoes her feral need. He has to bend nearly in half, but Bea drags him closer anyway. She twists her arms around his neck, nails scratching down his scalp and tangling in his silky hair.

It feels like finally coming home. Finally becoming who she’s _meant_ to be.

Then his hands trace down her body. She shivers and aches, on the knife’s edge already. What does it say about her that she swears she can taste the danger in his kiss, and that she’s never been more turned on in her _life_?

In all honesty, it says she’s a monster who’s kinda into murder as foreplay. But she knew that already, and it’s not like killing the bad guys first is _that_ bad of a kink, right? Better than some of the truly weird ones.

Before she can think about it any further, Cole’s grip on her waist tightens. With the same strength he showed her the night they met, he hauls her off her feet and presses her back against the apartment door.

It takes her breath away, makes her gasp his name into his ear while she scrambles to hold onto his shoulders. She hears the slide of his zipper in the silence over her racing heart and it makes her whimper. “Cole. Cole _please_.”

“Anything.” He whispers. “Anything. Yes. For you.”

His arms slip under her legs, supporting her far too easily. The tiny skirt she wears rides up her lush thighs and the touch of his fingers when he shoves the tiny scrap of her underwear aside makes her buck wantonly into him.

But it’s the sweetness of his kiss that breaks her heart when he ruthlessly lays claim to her mouth again just as he thrusts forward. He’s both gentle and fierce and she’s glad he’s kissing her breathlessly, because they _shouldn’t_ be heard, and if he hadn’t…

If he hadn’t kissed her she’d have screamed his name for every neighbor to hear.

She’s so wet there’s almost no resistance to the steady slide of his length inside her, but his cock is the longest she’s ever taken. It feels endless the same way the inky blackness around them feels like the abyss. By the time he’s buried inside her willing body they’re both shaking, trembling on the edge of a need too intense to name.

“Beautiful.” He murmurs, lips ghosting over her pointed chin and down her jaw. “Brilliant like diamonds glinting in the neon. The way the beat makes you move. Be mine. The Black Dahlia. My Bea.”

He sucks a kiss over her tender pulse, too long fingers digging into her thighs, overwhelming her with the sheer scale of him. She feels like a doll, a ballerina spinning in a music box, and she’s fine with it. Because she knows Cole’s fingers are the ones on the dial and she doesn’t mind dancing for him.

It’s as freeing as dancing for herself.

Maybe it’s only because they’re the same type of monster, but the second he rocks back and thrusts inside her again, she couldn’t care less about _any_ of it. She burrows her face into his shoulder and tries not to moan while he takes her just the way she likes. So hard that her back thuds against the door with each stroke.

She lets herself go and sinks her teeth into his neck when she cums on his cock, the friction against her clit, the feel of him hitting her just right, too much to bear. She wails and sobs just as he groans and buries himself a final time. His scalding seed fills her until she can’t be filled anymore. She knows it’ll soak her underwear, run down the inside of her thigh like blood from the blade of his knife.

She loves every moment of it as much as she loves him.

“We should go.” He says softly, running his knuckles down her cheek. “Maria will want you.”

“The body. Your fingerprints-”

He shakes his head and presses a soft kiss to her lips. “I’m safe. You never have to worry again.”

She believes him, but only because she’s as monstrous as he is.

* * *

Kirkwall isn’t the city _she’d_ have chosen when they left Ostwick and the Carta in the dust, but it has its advantages. The rent in Lowtown is cheap and the Blooming Rose needed dancers _and_ a bartender.

It’s nice to watch Maria work, to watch her smile. Sometimes, she even flirts.

Like she is _now_.

The man with the strong, stubbled jaw and easy smile leans on the bar. Maria flicks her hair over her shoulder when she slides the drink across the bar. He’s barely _looked_ at any of the dancers, eyes only on the pretty bartender with the crackling eyes.

Bea doesn’t know if she’s thrilled or terrified.

She frowns and steps into the cool night air, gulping it into her lungs, letting it dry the sweat on her skin. The coat hides her skimpy costume, but does nothing to keep the chill out.

She’s not alone for long.

“His name is Varric. Varric Tethras.”

Cole melts out of the shadows, arms wrapping around her from behind. Bea tips her head back to frown into his face. “No shit. The author?”

“Yes. He likes her and he’s nice. Laughing to hide his pain, kindness to make the hurt hurt less.”

“Ria could do worse.”

Cole nods seriously. Bea smiles.

“Gonna give me a kiss sweetheart?” She bats her eyelashes. He leans down immediately, at her beck and call as usual, to give her whatever she wants.

And she would do anything for him in return. _Anything_.

**Author's Note:**

> From Pornzammar with Love, [@cartadwarfwithaheartofgold](https://cartadwarfwithaheartofgold.tumblr.com/)


End file.
